1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mobile communication. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for addressing inefficiency of radio resources in processing response messages of a transmitted multi-message.
2. Description of the Related Art
In accordance with the rapid development of portable terminals, portable terminals enabling wireless voice communication and information exchange are requisite in life. At the early stage of the portable terminal, people merely considered the portable terminal providing wireless communications with mobility. With the advances of technologies of the portable terminal and adaptation of the wireless Internet, the portable terminal realizes not only the telephone service or other functions such as schedule management, but also various has applications in areas such as a game, a remote control using short-range communications, and an image capture using an embedded digital camera.
Of the various functions of the portable terminal, the short message function is widely used by users because of its lower cost than voice telephony.
Beyond the simple text message, a Multimedia Message Service (MMS) delivers a message including video, images, music file, and so on. The MMS is a representative wired/wireless integrated service with advantages of the short message service and the e-mail service, and is frequently used by portable terminal users within and outside the country.
In recent years, a multiple SMS or a concatenated SMS based on the transmission length is prevalently used as well as the simple text message transmission.
FIG. 1 illustrates a short message transmission in a general mobile communication system.
The mobile communication system of FIG. 1 includes a portable terminal 100 and a message server 120.
The portable terminal 100 sends a short message within an allowed number of characters limited by a communication provider. The portable terminal 100 performs a signal connection setup with the message server 120 in step 102, processes the corresponding text message in accordance with a wireless protocol, and then sends control protocol (CP) data to the message server 120 in step 104.
Upon receiving the data, the message server 120 sends ACK (acknowledgement) messages to the portable terminal 100 in response to the message in steps 106 and 108. Thus, the portable terminal 100 can check whether the message is transmitted successfully, or whether error occurs in the transmission. In the case of a failed message transmission, the portable terminal 100 retransmits the failed short message and then sends a final ACK to the message server 120 in step 110, releases the signal connection to the message server 120 in step 112, and finishes the short message transmission.
FIG. 2 illustrates a multi-message transmission in a general mobile communication system.
The mobile communication system of FIG. 2 can include a portable terminal 200 and a message server 250. The multi-message is greater than the short message in the data size and includes a concatenated SMS which sends the same or similar short messages with different number of words or characters.
The portable terminal 200 performs the signal connection setup with the message server 250 in step 202 as in the short message transmission, and sends the first short message to the message server 250 in step 204. Receiving the message, the message server 250 sends response messages of the received messages to the portable terminal 220 in steps 206 and 208. Upon receiving the response messages, the portable terminal 200 sends the second SMS message in step 210 and then sends a final ACK to the message server 250 in response to the ACK message of the first short message in step 212.
As sending the last short message in the same manner, the portable terminal 200 sends the final ACK to the message server 250 and releases the signal connection to the message server 250. The transmission time 230 of the first message is measured from the transmission of the first message from the portable terminal 200 to the transmission of the final ACK for the message to the message server 250.
As discussed above, when the multi-message is transmitted using the signal connection setup once established in the mobile communication system, the time corresponding to the signal connection delay time and the radio resources are saved. However, since the plurality of the short messages to transmit are delivered each in the manner of the short message transmission, the transmission of the total short messages takes a considerable time and the radio resources are occupied simultaneously during a quite long time.